'Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets' review: DeHaan, Cara Delevingne on a mangled quest

Medical experts offer differing opinions, but valerian root extract is considered by many to be an effective sleep aid with the right dosage, and a powerful, dangerous sedative with the wrong one.

I suspect these same two outcomes hold true for "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," writer-director Luc Besson's adaptation of the science-fiction comic books, first serialized in 1967 by writer Pierre Christin and illustrator Jean-Claude Mezieres.

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The "Valerian" series went on to global fame and influence, and everything from "Star Wars" to "Avatar" owes the flamboyantly trippy space adventures a considerable debt. The problem for Besson's movie, besides the problems with the movie itself, is its late arrival, galumphing into theaters so many years after so many recyclers and copycats.

Audiences have to settle for a swift opening montage, detailing the growth and diversity of the space station of the title, and then for stray, misleadingly inventive flashes thereafter. When Besson's strenuous diversion calms down long enough to let the audience enjoy the good stuff and the bad stuff equally, then "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" plays like jolly, overstuffed camp. Also, speaking of jolly, Ethan Hawke shows up as a space pimp named, yes … Jolly!

Let's begin at the beginning and then stop dead, abruptly, like so many scenes in "Valerian and the City of the Thousand Planets." Dane DeHaan plays Valerian, a sullen law enforcement major assigned to keep peace in the human districts of the space heap known as Alpha. His partner, Sgt. Laureline, is played by Cara Delevingne, and they're sweethearts, but she's standoffish, all too aware of his reputation. He's determined to marry, however, and to prove himself worthy of her staggering hauteur. We meet these two in a virtual-reality beach sequence with a weirdly date rape-y vibe, which provides sexual tension but not the right kind.

The Bickersons are assigned by the minister of defense (Clive Owen, whose military costume is so Third Reich the Third Reich could sue) to locate an unidentified enemy force lurking somewhere near the center of Alpha. This present-tense narrative line loops back to the early sequence set on a tropical planet inhabited by the highly advanced Pearl people. One apocalypse later, the Pearl civilization's in ruins. The entire species depends on an energy source provided by a mini-aardvark that, and I wish this were metaphoric rather than literal, poops magical pearls on command. (The Pearls are like the in-laws of the Na'vi of "Avatar," with even less body fat.)

The perpetrators of that early attack remain a poorly kept secret for much of "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets." The larger mystery concerns DeHaan, a good, truthful actor in the right circumstances ("The Place Beyond the Pines," for starters) but all wrong for this stuff. Besson's knack for space-opera banter is nonexistent, and striving for Han Solo supercoolness, DeHaan's Valerian lands somewhere between "up really late last night" and full-on, barely disguised disinterest in what's going down in the 28th century.

Alpha has its moments, to be sure. (The real star of "Valerian" is costume designer Olivier Beriot, who treats Besson's movie like the largest, longest fashion runway in the universe.) The numbers regarding Alpha are impressive: 30 million inhabitants, 5,000 languages spoken among various human and alien species, one of whom is a shape-shifting "actress" (i.e., exotic dancer) named Bubble, played by Rihanna. "What good is freedom if you're an illegal immigrant a long way from home?" she asks at one point, before joining forces with Valerian and Laureline and quoting Shakespeare. The mass slaughter of the Pearl people consciously, queasily evokes the Holocaust (6 million dead, we're told, and the word "genocide" is used). Besson may revere his source material, but his tone is all over the place and the action's disappointingly listless.

A few notions click: I liked the diver's helmet bit, where Laureline sticks her head in a jellylike blob and sees visions. I liked the fishing-line comedy routine, which is both suspenseful and amusing. I liked the Jabba the Hutt prototype sizing up the tasty-looking skull of our heroine. Do these accumulate? Not really. The story is wanting. And I wonder if the concepts at the heart of the material are bloodthirsty enough to work with a teenage 21st-century American action audience, raised on "Call of Duty." When the 28th-century machine guns come out in the climax of "Valerian," they're super quiet, like a French bullet train. Besson's commercial instincts for sleek, violent fantasy are often sound, but "Valerian" is more sedative than show.